


Make It Shine So Bright

by renquise



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2011-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-27 06:05:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/pseuds/renquise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years and a lot of hide-and-seek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make It Shine So Bright

John holds his breath as they go through the wall and burst through in a shower of glass. The shards shoot out toward them and then slow, drifting by and blinking out in flashes of light. The world blurs green around them, the shards caught mid-flash and hanging in the air.

They’re through.

Jade leaves the planets hanging in the air, taking her hands away slowly, like she’s putting the last touch on a house of cards. John doesn’t hug her immediately, because it would be really awkward if he made her drop a bunch of planets! But as soon as she pulls her hands away, she hugs him hard, her new ears tickling the side of his face.

“Hi!” she says, not letting go of him.

The only thing he can really say is “hi” back, and smile and smile.

The last time he had seen Jade, she had been all in gold and so still. Now, she’s glowing with power and doing things he can’t even understand. He should feel more jealous of her awesome space powers, but she’s kind of amazing like this, and he can’t help grinning at her dog ears and the way they twitch and swivel as she explains things.

They can only sit on the bridge and hash out crazy space-time shit for so long, though. Jade tags him, and they play hide-and-seek in the ship’s belly, barrelling through the tight hallways and steep staircases. Jade says the ship looks a bit like Prospit used to, all twisty corridors and glowing gold. (The ship is empty, thank goodness. He doesn’t really know what they would do if they found the bodies of Dersites and Prospitians.)

Jade is ridiculously good at hide and seek. It takes all of two minutes for Jade to find him, and she tucks herself under the navigation console with him.

“Hey Jade, we can’t play sardines, we don’t have anyone else to look for us!” he says, bumping her shoulder lightly. “Besides, you totally cheated. You’ve got a dog nose now, so you can track people down. Like a bloodhound. A spacehound.”

Jade wrinkles her nose and goes cross-eyed trying to look at it. “Don’t be silly, I don’t have a dog nose,” she says, and grins. “See, if I had a wet dog nose, I would do this!”

She licks her finger and gives John’s ear a wet willy, and John’s yell is totally manly and not at all a shriek.

“Okay, okay, then you totally cheated with your space powers,” John gasps after a brief bout of scuffling that ended when he whammed his head on the console.

“Noooo, you’re just bad at hiding!” Jade says, rubbing the bump on his head.

“Nope, totally cheating," John says, "But it’s got to be different, huh? What’s it like?” It’s not about the totally egregious cheating now-- he’s curious. When he’d awoken, it was like he’d grown another sense, an awareness of the air around him and its currents, flowing through his fingers and shaping itself to the landscape, rushing in and out of people’s lungs (and the air around Dad and Rose’s Mom had been so still).

She frowns a bit, pursing her lips. “Well, I feel like I just-- I can feel the shape of things, the way space curves around them. It’s kind of weird, I guess!”

Jade’s powers are so cool. “Hey, close your eyes. Can you feel this?” She closes her eyes, and John waves his hand in the air.

“Yeah, definitely! That might just be because you’re flailing around so much, though,” Jade says, her eyes squeezed shut.

“Okay, fine, what about this?” He hovers his fingers right above her cheek and resists saying “I’m not touching youuuuuu.”

“You’re about to touch my face, silly,” she says, nudging her soft cheek into his hand.

His mouth goes a little dry, and he can feel his ears go red. “Oh. Yeah. Well, see, you totally cheated.”

Jade rolls her eyes, but doesn’t dislodge his hand from her cheek. “Fine, fine, I tracked you down using my space-dog senses. I am a mighty hunter, and now I have caught you!” Jade pulls him into her lap and launches a dastardly and underhanded tickle attack, which John can only repay in kind, and ha, Jade is way more ticklish than he is!

She also has this snorting giggle that’s both hilarious and really cute. She’s got him pretty well-matched in the man-or-lady-grit department, though, because as soon as he lets up on the tickling, she wrestles him down and sits on him, still giggling. It’s totally not fair, because she’s got a couple of inches on him, but Dad had said he’d get his growth spurt anytime now.

They’ve got the same knobby knees, but on John they’re just knees, and on Jade they’re something special, kind of delicate-looking in her striped stockings. Jade has pretty knees, is what he thinks he’s saying, which is kind of weird, but he’s okay with that.

Jade settles himself over him, and John slings his arms over her shoulders. Jade’s face fits perfectly in the crook of his neck, and he can feel her warm breath, a steady in-and-out against his skin.

He feels Jade’s face shift away from his neck, and he opens his eyes. Jade’s face is really, really close, John realizes, and Jade tilts her head and places her lips against his, and oh my god, he totally just smooched Jade.

And it’s really nice. Jade nuzzles into his face. Their glasses clack against each other, so he takes them off to try and minimize the eye-poking. Without his glasses, Jade is a blur of velvet-black, tanned skin, and green, green eyes, and he hopes he doesn’t end up blindly making out with her nose or something.

“Hi,” she says.

She’s so very alive and warm and vibrant, and they’ve got all the time in the world, so he kisses her again.

Three years is a long time. John learns the inner workings of a cool spaceship. They empty out their sylladexes in the captain’s quarters and make it their own . There is a lot of smooching. He learns that Jade likes having her ears scratched, and that the backs of her knees are soft and tender. They have exactly one knock-down-drag-out fight, and he nurses a black eye for days after and knows that he never wants to make Jade cry again. They play games and take things apart and put them back together and make a lot of stupid and ridiculously awesome things. They wait.

Some days- though they don’t really have days, strictly speaking-- they sit and look at the gentle revolutions of the planets, try and spot the little orange dot of Dave on Skaia. Jade doesn’t want to risk taking him out, and John can see that she worries about him, alone on the wreckage of the battlefield. Three years is a long time, and John can only be glad that Jade is there, or he’d probably go a little crazy.

When it comes, John can’t feel any change, but Jade looks up and says, “Oh! Here we go!” and rushes to the prow of the ship. She catches the planets and leans out into the sea-green blur like a figurehead on one of those old-timey ships.

Rose and Dave are waiting, and the trolls too. He stands at Jade’s shoulder and leans in to press a kiss to her cheek--”For good luck! Haha, not that you need it, miss crazy space powers.”

Jade smiles at him, bright as anything.

They go.


End file.
